All Change Sunday 20 May

From Sunday 20th May there will be a wholesale revamp of the railway timetable in the Rochdale area. Virtually all trains will be retimed and it will be essential to check the times beforehand.

For most of the day, Monday to Saturday, there will be six trains every hour each way between Rochdale and Manchester Victoria, two of these six will start at Rochdale and provide the service from Castleton, Mills Hill and Moston. From Manchester Victoria they will continue their journey to serve Salford Central, Salford Crescent, Bolton, Darwen and Blackburn.

Some of the trains from Leeds will carry on through Manchester Victoria providing direct services to Wigan and Southport. Some of the trains to Leeds will run through to York.

Castleton and Mills Hill will have an off-peak service of two trains an hour. Smithy Bridge and Littleborough will also have an off-peak service of two trains an hour, one running to Leeds and the other to Blackburn via Burnley. There will be additional trains at all these stations during the peak hours.

Richard Greenwood, chair of STORM commented, “We welcome the increase of 2 extra trains. The 2 services which start and terminate at Rochdale should reduce the over-crowding in the morning and evening peaks with the trains not, as they are currently, being full of commuters travelling from stations East of Rochdale.”

STORM has collated departure times from our local stations see links at bottom of pages, and volunteers will distribute leaflets on Friday at local stations.